Letter: More to it than that

Discussing evolution, letter writer Rod Dudley claims, "the era of genetics and DNA has passed by the doctor," Allen Malnak.

That "explanation" shows you have little knowledge of evolution. Your math might be correct, but you compute the wrong thing. The chimp (or any other present-day higher ape) did not evolve into a human. Your math calculates the probability that that would happen. And no evolution scientist claims it did.

Millions of generations ago, the DNA of an ape-like animal randomly mutated into a slightly different animal by a change of a single nucleotide. This happened millions of times, and almost always the new animal was very like its parent. But a few fit their environment better than their brothers or cousins. These prospered a little more and had more offspring who carried the new, slightly better nucleotide. This is dubbed, "survival of the fittest."

Ron's children are not exactly like him. This is why we can use DNA to identify criminals.

Ron's children are changing and in a few hundred thousand generations may be different animals that better fit a future environment